Green Revolution in India
This paper, "The Role of the Government in Agricultural Technology Innovation: The Case of the Green Revolution in India," was first submitted to Professor Kelly Sims Gallagher in fulfillment of the final research paper for "DHP-P256: Innovations for Sustainable Prosperity," for completion of the M.A. in Law and Diplomacy coursework at The Fletcher School at Tufts University (May 2017).
So much is said about the Green Revolution's failures in uneven adoption across India, and its singular success in the North-West of the country, but almost nothing is every said about its wins in a developmental experiment of donor-recipient coordination and alignment. One could only hope donor countries could return to this level of altruism almost, in their technology transfers once again. The Indian Green Revolution is perhaps the most fascinating as a successful case study of American aid in a country which soon after rejected American-anything under Indira Gandhi, and never really returned to being a recipient of the aid in a way so many other developing countries did. Without making a judgement on that, its undeniable that another such development project has not occurred in the sphere of universal aid.
“Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.”
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“There are no miracles in agricultural production.”
NORMAN BORLAUG, NOBEL LECTURE, 1970
The first decade in post-independence India saw a sharp fall in food security indicators. The newly formed state of Pakistan, which included West Punjab, and Sindh, were also the erstwhile productive and fertile cereal producing regions of the subcontinent. In the east, Bengal was sliced in half, leaving the productive paddy fields in East Pakistan (what is now Bangladesh). Modern India was stripped of its most productive regions, leaving its mainstay in the hands of mostly very poor, subsistence farmers.
What followed was a decade of sharp decline in food production, and a loss of faith in India’s most closely held, and culturally significant economic activity. The colonial period had significantly worsened the food situation in India. A combination of droughts, little technological change, government neglect, and extensive exports of Indian produce had brought India to a state of almost-famine in the 1960s (Parayil).
With a heavy dependence on American food aid, rampant civil strife, and a slow adjustment to post-colonial life, Independent India recognized the need for strong foundations for the following decades to build up its own agriculture sector, which at the time contributed nearly 50 percent to India’s national income (Tripathi and Prasad). 90 percent of India’s population lived in roughly 600,000 villages, almost completely dependent on agriculture as their main source of income (Parayil). Indian agriculture remained essentially the same as it had been hundreds of years earlier. Thus, India acknowledged the fundamental need to revamp the agricultural sector and prioritize the food supply problem, before embarking on an industrial revolution, similar to Western nations.
It is widely acknowledged that agricultural development is the cornerstone of poverty eradication. Despite all we know about this issue, several countries till this date, still struggle to address the structural and systemic problems which prevent smallholder and subsistence farmers from achieving better yields, and thus higher incomes. Countries in Asia adopted their “Green Revolutions” starting in the 1960s, across India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Philippines (albeit unevenly).
What are then the lessons to be learnt from the case of India’s (first) Green Revolution in systems, structures, and product innovation, as yields stagnate and other Least Developed Countries (LDC) seek to enhance their food security indicators? In particular, what was the role of the government in agricultural technological innovation, and its subsequent adoption by farmers?
WHAT IS THE "GREEN REVOLUTION"?
The seeds of the “Green Revolution” were sown in 1954, when American agronomist (and thereafter, Nobel Peace Prize winner), Norman Borlaug, was conducting research at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and invented a strain of dwarfed wheat variety. This came after the miraculous increases in hybrid maize corn that the American farmers had witnessed in the 1930s.
It was essentially an exercise in technology transfer and diffusion, which included incorporating a set of technological innovations and later, policy measures, in several poor Asian and Latin American countries, through the support of aid agencies and academic research institutions, to “force nature to be bountiful through the transfer and adaptation of simple technological fixes” (Parayil). Some agricultural economics scholars have so far as to describe it as the most radical innovation in agriculture since the plough.
In “Elements of Induced Innovation: A Historical Perspective for the Green Revolution,” Hayami has documented similar technology transfer exercises in the case of Korea and Taiwan under Japanese Imperialist rule. Hayami attributes Japan’s technology transfer to its colonies to a severe rice shortage and commodity prices inflation in post-war Japan in 1918, which resulted in the Kome Sodo. Kome Sodo, or the Rice Riots of 1918, were a series of protests that plagued the country, involving over 66,000 workers, and eventually led to the resignation of the then Prime Minister of Japan, Terauchi Masatake. Japan decided to increase their rice imports from the colonies by developing the rice production capabilities there. Japan transferred their “prototype” of agricultural technology to Taiwan and Korea, through the transfer of scientists. The motivation for Japan was to induce a high social return to such an investment, however it was for their own benefit rather than the colonies of Korea and Taiwan. This exercise in technology transfer eventually led to the widespread adoption of the high-yielding variety of Ponlai rice across the Japanese colonies.
In India’s case for example, the package consisted of technological innovations in the seed variety, with a focus on the most productive and fertile regions of the country. It was not a pan-India effort. Whereas prior attempts had included land reforms, increasing the land area under cultivation, improved extension services, none of those efforts transformed production in a large way. There was still a large gap in supply and demand, which was filled by food aid mostly from the United States (Posgate).
Before the introduction of the Green Revolution, agriculture mainly comprised of subsistence farmers, who grew crops for their own consumption, and selling the little extra produce in rudimentary markets. Agricultural laborers, or those who worked on other’s land, were paid in grain. There was little or no technology – they used mainly humans and animals on the field. The little modern technology that existed, had been supplied by the British colonial administration to produce cash crops like cotton, tea, coffee, and spices, which formed the majority of Colonial India’s exports to the rest of the world, forming the backbone of the highly exploitative economic activities of the British colonial rule.
Following the Soviet model of central planning, India’s first Five Year Plan of 1951 focused on agriculture, but in a limited way. The central planners did not anticipate the extent of food insecurity and systemic issues that India would face in order to feed itself, which when combined with a surge in population growth, political instability, a crumbling post-colonial economy, and war, leading to a type of Malthusian nightmare. (In “Essay on the Principle of Population,” Robert Malthus proposes that while human population grows exponentially, food production grows at an arithmetic rate. This scenario of arithmetic food growth with simultaneous geometric human population growth predicted a future when humans would have no resources to survive on. To avoid such a catastrophe, Malthus urged policy makers to control population growth urgently).
The planners were less aware perhaps of Hayami-Ruttan’s induced development theory (Hayami and Ruttan); agricultural development is the first and paramount requirement of overall economic development in lesser developed countries. Hayami’s historical account of Japan, Taiwan and Korea, offers similar lessons in the role of agricultural development in those countries.
The Green Revolution is often hailed as the “one size fits all” or a “silver bullet” for hunger worldwide, till date. Policy makers and international development organizations advocate for a Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa employs a budget of $380 million per year, to make grants to organizations working towards this goal in Africa (Gates Foundation). But it is important to note, that it was not just the HYV seeds of wheat or rice that prompted the increase in yield. It was a combination of localized policy and demonstration measures, in addition to the HYVs, which prompted the success of the seeds where it did, and uneven adoption where it did not take off. In India, one of the countries which witnessed the successes of the Green Revolution, it did not happen overnight. It followed innovation theory’s famous chain-linked model of systemic innovation, over decades. It was a combination of innovative scientific research, governments (India, and the US), aid agencies and foundations, international agricultural research institutions, and most importantly, the risk-taking Indian farmers who adopted the technologies.
ONE - SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE GREEN REVOLUTION
According to Parayil, as well as Dasgupta, the Green Revolution in India was introduced in three main stages, with the first stage almost a decade before the “miracle seeds” of the high-yielding varieties of semi-dwarfed wheat were introduced. The first stage was the development of a national research center, and the setting up of agricultural universities. This formed a concerted and massive government undertaking for systemic and structural change focusing on knowledge generation, research and development. The main component of this stage was institution building, through innovation in their systems, structure, and performance. This included the setting up of the reformed Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, and the formation of American style land-grant universities.
In 1948, a newly independent India, set up the University Education Commission to lay the foundation bricks for reviving the education system and ensure the country’s population would be prepared to take on the challenges that the country would face. Centuries of colonial rule had impoverished the country, and the government was anxious to reverse the exploitation and pursue the path of economic development.
Inspired by the idea of land-grant universities in the US, the Education Commission recommended the setting up of similar style universities in India. Thus, with the help of USAID, India’s first land grant style university was set up in Uttar Pradesh (now called the Gobind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology). This university following the template of the University of Illinois. In the US, land grant type universities had been introduced under the Morrill Act of 1862, when federal aid and land was promised to universities who would devote their institutes of learning to practical agriculture, science, and engineering. The subsequent set up of US land grant style universities in India helped formed the basis of India’s absorptive capacity for the consequent leapfrogging that was to occur through the seed technology transfer; these institutes were key to to absorbing the technology transfer, and agricultural know-how from the US to India.
The first step India undertook was to streamline and concentrate all research institutes and commodity committees under one umbrella organization by the name of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). This was to set in motion the wheels of local, indigenous research, which could help solve India’s extensive problems of yield stagnation, and primitive agricultural techniques.
The third important institution in this early stage of the Green Revolution was the setting up of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, for the first of its kind graduate program in the agricultural sciences. The aim of this institute was to train qualified agricultural scientists who would spur indigenous research. Rockefeller assigned some of the top American scientists to lead this project, including Ralph Cummings, who was the first Dean of the institute. Till date, the IARI has trained several thousand graduate and PhD students, from several developing countries in Asia and Africa, not just India.
This idea is also echoed in “Theory of Induced Institutional Innovation” by Vernon Ruttan and Yujiro Hayami. They highlight the importance of agricultural research and development, based on examples from Japan and the US, and conclude that it cannot be left to the private sector alone, which would lead to bias and conflict of interest in the allocation of research resources. They also highlight the importance of national institutes for agricultural research capacity, which are needed to advance social returns on innovation in the public sector.
Credit is due to the several American actors in this process, who coordinated their efforts in a very strategic way. Today, similar aid efforts suffer from terrible coordination, and lack of planning. However, in this example, USAID, Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation planned their efforts very systematically, ensuring no overlap. The Ford Foundation entered at a unique point, giving extensive financial aid to support the state-level extension services, forming the Integrated Agricultural Development District Programmes (IADP).
The Rockefeller Foundation issued funding to set up multiple national research institutions across the developing world to address these concerns, not just in India, namely: International Rice Research Institute (Philippines, 1961), International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (Mexico, 1966), International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (Nigeria, 1968), and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Colombia, 1968) (Kohler).
The remarkable role played by the Rockefeller Foundation in this context is unparalleled in the development assistance story. The investments made by the Foundation in human capital development laid the foundation for subsequent measures. They did this in several different ways: scholarships for employees of Indian institutions with a guarantee of further employment after the program, scholarships for local candidates to gain expatriate-led training, and grants for equipment and facilities for the locally set up institutions. Overall, these measures also infused the Indian agricultural sciences community with efficiency and competitiveness that was unseen before (Lele and Goldsmith).
Some of the initial concerns were that the students would be unable to return to apply their learnings to the Indian context, or perhaps worse, not return at all and seek out greener pastures abroad. However, as the table below highlights, a meagre 5 percent of recipients pursued employment outside India. The table also highlights the number of scholarships and fellowships that were awarded to Indians to familiarize themselves with the kind of academic research work which was crucial to the later success of the several Indian institutes they were instrumental in setting up.
TWO - BUILDING ABSORPTIVE CAPACITY, AND BRINGING SCIENCE TO THE FOREFRONT
Politics in India has always viewed the farmer from the lens of a political issue, more than anything else. Till date, the agricultural sector is largely seen as a vote-bank, rather than a partner for economic development. In this next stage, Parayil describes how the government and leaders began to view the lack of development in this sector as a gap to be bridged, between science and politics, and how to bring scientific knowledge and its advocates to the forefront.
The agricultural sciences were not considered avenues for the best and brightest at the time, in part due to the burgeoning trend of urbanization, and migration from the rural, agricultural lifestyle to the city for higher paying jobs. The institute adopted two systemic changes to address this. Firstly, top administrative positions were changed to be occupied by scientists, instead of bureaucrats. C. Subramaniam, the Minister of Agriculture at the time, removed a civil service officer from the position of Director-General of ICAR, and appointed instead an agricultural scientist by the name of B. P. Pal to lead ICAR. Secondly, he created a new branch in the colonial legacy of the civil services, called the Indian Agricultural Research Service, in order to promise a guaranteed career trajectory to agricultural scientists.
In “The Management of Institutional Innovation: Lessons from Transferring the Land Grant Model to India,” Goldsmith attributes these changes made in transforming academic and research institutions to the consequent successes of the Green Revolution technology adoption and dispersion. He credits these changes in eventually forming a sophisticated scientific base, and making national leaders open and comfortable with the idea of institutional innovation.
During Subramaniam’s tenure, the Planning Commission initially blocked the import of the HYV Wheat seeds from Mexico on the grounds that they would not suit Indian conditions (they were not officially imported until much later). However, he prepared the building blocks for when the program would be launched in full capacity.
With the death of Prime Minister Shastri in 1966, increased political instability made a food insecure India even more desperate. Subramaniam was able to convince Shastri’s successor, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to import the seeds, the only options in the short-run to achieve self-sufficiency. This was the same Gandhi who led India to its most notable and longest stalemate with the United States. She was a staunch critic of the United States’ foreign policy, particularly as it pertained to matters in the Indian subcontinent, and welcomed the opportunity to make India independent of food imports from the U.S. In 1965, the Government announced its plans to grow HYVs on 32.5 million acres over the next 5 years. In 1966, India bought 18,000 tons of Mexican wheat seed with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation (Lele and Goldsmith). In his book “The New Strategy in Indian Agriculture,” Subramaniam writes of this episode: "The stakes were so high it was just like gambling. In retrospect, it was historical compulsion, compulsion of circumstances, which enabled me to force through in one month critical decisions which might otherwise have taken years.”
While not a scientific research institution, it is important to note the formation of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), at this stage. The FCI was born out of Subramaniam’s idea that the agriculture sector must be profitable and competitive, and thus, treated as an industry the way other sectors were too. The FCI was a key player in procuring rice and wheat from smallholder farmers, predicting procurement prices, and collect data on farm economics (Djurfeldt et al). The FCI also purchased excess production at a guaranteed to promise stability to farmers.
These institutional reforms form the basis of what Andrew Hall et al describe as forming a “national innovation system” for the agriculture sector instead of scattered research partnerships, which are crucial for developing new technologies, particularly in such a large scale. In “Why Research Partnerships Really Matter: Innovation Theory, Institutional Arrangements, and Implications for Developing New Technology for the Poor,” authors Hall et al conclude that such a national innovation system, or systematic measures and reforms that engage science and technology development, are essential to eventual partnerships for programs that enhance livelihoods of the poor through technological advancement.
THREE - WIDESPREAD ADOPTION BY FARMERS IN PUNJAB AND HARYANA
The magnitude of this entire effort and exercise manifests itself in the final few stages of any innovation process: will the customers (i.e. farmers) use this new technology? The immensity of this task cannot be taken lightly. It is far from simple to convince a person to change their habits and adopt new practices. This stage of the innovation process can make or break the market of new technological advancement.
Farmers are no different. Initially, diffusion of the new HYV wheat seeds was incredibly difficult. There is extensive literature on the nature of technology adoption among farmers across the developing nations of the world. One such study in a World Bank report titled, “Adoption of Agricultural Innovation in Developing Countries: A Survey” by Feder et al in 1982, identifies multiple factors for technology adoption among farmers including, but not limited to, farm size, land tenure system, credit access, labor availability, biophysical characteristics, risk preferences, human capital, and access to commodity markets. In “The Diffusion of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two Iowa Communities,” Ryan and Gross similarly documented the actions of the corn farmers of Iowa in the 1930s, who were not convinced to take up HYV corn seeds until they witnessed the demonstration of the new seed on a small demonstration plot.
The government, under Subramaniam’s leadership, launched a three-pronged policy support initiative to ensure widespread adoption. Firstly, there was a wide-scale public awareness campaign where information was disseminated through radio, press, and cinema. Secondly, 1000 demonstration plots were set up across the highest productivity regions showcasing the seeds potential. And finally, there was a guarantee of compensation in the case of crop failure, which was perhaps the most crucial part to convince farmers to take that leap of faith. With support of the newly revamped extension services offered by state governments, the leadership did not want to take any risk of food insecurity and famine. It is highly unlikely that the adoption of these “miracle seeds” would have been so widespread if it hadn’t been for such policy support options.
Due to the foundation laid in the first stage, the country was more than ready to diffuse and adopt the technologies. The HYV wheat seeds from Mexico were subsequently reengineered at the several Indian research institutions to adapt them to local preferences. For example, the Mexican wheat was more of a reddish variety, which didn’t suit Indian tastes. In addition to adapting the varieties to local tastes, there were modifications to suit them to India’s climactic conditions. Norman Borlaug has often described these domino, adaptive technology innovation effects as the “chain reaction,” which then prompted other South-Asian and South-East Asian countries to witness their own demonstration plot of sorts in the form of India, and follow suit.
In “Technical and Institutional Transfer in Agricultural Development,” Ruttan describes the three phases of international transfer of agricultural technology, namely: materials, design, and capacity. Pray classifies this type of technology transfer in the Green Revolution to the “material transfer" which included the importing of seeds, plants, animals, machines, and techniques associated with these materials. However, it seems that the Green Revolution in India was the beneficiary of all three phases of such transfers. Materials, through the seeds; design, through the local adaptations and varieties of the dwarfed wheat; and finally, capacity, through the setting up of universities and research centers (however, not in that exact order).
Punjab (North India) was one of the first states in India where farmers adopted the new HYV seeds widely, until the 1970s. During this period of adoption, wheat production increased by 10 percent annually (Sidhu & Byerlee).
As per a World Bank Operations Evaluation Department report on the 31st anniversary of CGIAR, the Green Revolution-led investments in agriculture in India led to a number of spillover effects. In addition to documented contributions to poverty reduction in Punjab, Haryana and Tamil Nadu, where the increased yields and thereby incomes led to generation of assets, changes in land holding pattern, increase in wages for agricultural workers, and increased employment throughout the year.
Firstly, a number of crop varieties (for Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Pigeon Pea, Chickpea, and Groundnut) developed by ICAR were later adopted in Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Swaziland and Botswana, with varying degrees of success. Secondly, policy measures adopted in India during the Green Revolution later influenced development programs in crop yield insurance programs, relief works, irrigation and water harvesting structures. Thirdly, the contributions to research planning and the agricultural sciences community were immense and seen to enhance research in pre-breeding, genetic enhancement, and germplasm management.
LESSONS FROM THE INDIAN GREEN REVOLUTION FOR GOVERNMENT-LED INNOVATION
It is evident that the role of government was irreplaceable in the Green Revolution. There is no alternative to strategic state intervention, through research partnerships, public universities, academic research centers, and finally, diffusion. The Green Revolution was not just the seeds; in fact, the public interventions in terms of public awareness campaigns, demonstration plots, and compensation for crop failure were crucial to ensure large scale adoption by farmers. Without these measures, the introduction of seeds may not have seen the diffusion they did.
The government employed a selective strategy for the seeds and policies, by concentrating the wheat in the bread basket of Punjab and Haryana, and the rice in Tamil Nadu. This strategy of “picking winners” was crucial to seeing the success of the program. There is no questioning India’s fantastic political will to handle the impending food crisis. Such political will has rarely been seen again in India’s quest to solve other development problems.
In terms of the technology transfer process, India began investing in its absorptive capacity heavily and a full decade before the material transfer of the HYV seeds. This was the most crucial first step; without this first stage, the seeds would have fallen in the laps of an inefficient public research system, run primarily by bureaucrats. Pray also highlights an important lesson here: the technology had to be appropriate for the physical and economic conditions to India. Due to the initial innovation in institutions and technology transfer exercises, the Indian science community were able to adapt and transform the seed varieties to suit their tastes and preferences.
In “The Development of National Agricultural Research Capacity: India's Experience with the Rockefeller Foundation and Its Significance for Africa,” Uma Lele and Arthur A. Goldsmith argue that there were several other factors determined the case for success in India (in addition to those highlighted by Pray). The main factor that differentiates the India example from other developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa struggling with yield productivity, is the initiative taken by the government to address the food insufficiency in the country. The Government of India approached the Rockefeller Foundation of its own accord, which led to alignment and harmony of interests between the donor and the recipient. This kind of alignment of interests is unique; several countries in Africa receive aid irrespective of their own interests.
The second factor was the long-term engagement of the foundations in their projects in India. From sending one of their top agronomists, Ralph Cummings, to setting up the agricultural research systems over a decade, the engagement was consistent in a way that several other foundational aid projects tend not to be in the current day development scenario. The expatriate postings ranged from five years at the minimum, to ten years at the maximum which encouraged a commitment and investment in the success of India’s Green Revolution.
Finally, it should be evident that the Green Revolution would not have occurred without the dedicated leadership of C. Subramaniam, the Minister of Agriculture, who fought repeatedly for the introduction of the packages of technology from the United States and Mexico.
Thus, the success of the Green Revolution is primarily the result of highly successful partnerships: in research, science, academic institutions, foundations, and governments. The reasons for success, which include the building of a national research capacity, and homogenous and coordinated external technical assistance. Without these two factors, long-term sustainable growth in the agricultural sector would be highly unlikely.